Consumers and professional hair stylists alike employ many techniques and methods to obtain the most desirable hair style for themselves or a client. Hair styling most commonly includes cuts/trims, weaves, coloring, extensions, perms, permanent relaxers, curling, as well as many other forms of styling or texturing, all of which require special technique and skill often from a trained professional. Further, many individuals will have their hair styled in regular intervals making hair styling a very lucrative business.
One common tool employed by professional hair stylists as well as by individuals styling their own hair is the hair dryer, also known as a blow dryer. Throughout a hair styling process, the hair is often wetted and/or applied with lotions or serums, conventionally by hand, to the hair strands or base portion of the hair, in order to achieve certain qualities, such as lift, volume, color, or texture. Once applied, the stylists will then proceed to dry the hair with the hair dryer to set the lotion or serum.
Further, in order to achieve a consistent style throughout, the professional stylists must then deliberately and carefully move from section to section of hair each time applying the desired water, lotion, or serum, and then drying. As could be imaged, there are many drawbacks with such a tedious process.
First, when applying lotions and serums to the hair by hand, there is often an increased change of the waste product of the particular lotion or serum applied. On many occasions the stylists will wipe excess lotion or serum from their hands in order to properly proceed with the styling process. Such a waste may cause substantial monetary loss to professional hair styling studios wherein many clients are treated on a daily bases.
Second, the employment of a conventional hair dryer additionally falls short. It is well known in the art that completely drying the hair strands all over the head will bring about the best results and allow a style to last the longest. Further, having healthy cuticles will also result in long lasting hair styles.
Briefly, the cuticle portion of the hair is the shingle-like layer of overlapping cells which provides a protective barrier for the inner structure of the hair. If the cuticle is brushed or otherwise impacted against its grain, it can cause damage. As is common in the art because of the lack of a directional exhaust on blow dryers, a stylist inadvertently may direct the blowing air of a hair dryer toward the cuticle, and thus against the grain of the shingle-like structure, because of the lack of the ability to change the direction and angle of exhausting hot air from the blow dryer. The resulting high speed stream of heated air directed along the hair shaft in the wrong direction will tend to lift and damage the hair strands and the hair can fizz and become further damaged.
A conventional solution to this problem is to re-position the exiting exhaust to follow a direction on exit from conventional linear blow dryers, along the grain of the cuticles, which is typically from the root toward the ends. However, positioning a conventional blow dryer to function in this fashion is not so simple. This is because placing the blow dryer in such a position to exhaust air away from the roots along the axis of the hair shaft, requires the stylist or individual to hold their arms in an elevated position, and their hands at uncomfortable and unnatural angles to the forearm. Such an arm and hand posture, while holding the heavy or bulky blow drying type hair dryer can cause injury, can over time cause injury to body joints, tendons and muscles, and is inherently very uncomfortable, and tiring. Additionally, achieving such a position of the hands and arms, to direct hot air exhausting from the blow dryer away from hair roots and toward the distal hair ends, is simply unattainable for a single individual styling their own hair.
As such, both professional and home users of conventional blow dryers may out of necessity, caused by lack of physical ability, often proceed with drying treated and wet hair, against the grain. This inherently risks and generally causes strand damage to hair and a fizz look upon drying. Or, in order to prevent too much damage to hair strands being dried using conventional dryers held in uncomfortable positions, the user will often limit the drying time to less than is required for optimum results which may result in slightly damp hair, and is undesirable.
Third, when users are unable to properly direct exhausting air from a dryer correctly away from the scalp due to posture or physical limitations, they fall back to the method where they position the blow dryer type hair dryer to exhaust the drying air substantially toward the cuticle base or root of the hair, the hot air is also directed toward the recipients scalp or face, wherein burns and discomfort are frequently can occur. As could be discerned, if a professional stylist were to burn a clients scalp or face, the business may lose a return client, and the stylist can possibly lose their job.
In reference to the above noted lacking prior art, there have been many attempts in prior art to solve these and other problems. U.S. Pat. No. 5,303,483 to Chan teaches an air diffuser attachment for engaging the barrel end of a conventional hairdryer intended to produce an even distribution of air exiting the dryer as needed. However Chan does not solve the problems associated with applying lotions prior to drying or re-positioning the hair dryer to blow with the cuticle grain.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,471,763 to McArthur teaches a nozzle attachment for hair dryers having a flow directing member intended to create a substantially cone shaped air flow as needed for improved hair drying. U.S. Pat. No. 5,473,824 to Prehodka teaches a rotating outlet for hair dryers intended to cause air exiting the hair dryer to travel in a circular pattern as needed for improved hair drying. However, neither McAruther nor Prehodka solve the problems noted above.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,152,610 to Csavas teaches a hair dryer attachment having means for engaging the users hair simultaneously while employing the hair dryer. However, Csavas does not provide solutions to the above noted shortcomings.
U.S. Pub. No. 2007/0186435A1 to Fan teaches hair dryer bellows having pivotally mounted connectors allowing the airflow to be pointed at any desired angle. Although providing a means for redirecting airflow without requiring the hair dryer to be repositioned, Fan does not provided a solution to all the above noted problems.
As such, there is a continuing unmet need for a hair dryer attachment device for directing the exhaust air from the distal end of a blow dryer, away from the roots of hair strands and toward the distal ends, for hair in all positions on the hemispheric scalp. Such a device must be easily and continuously adjustable to new encountered positions to maintain a correct airflow during hair treatments to provide a means for more effectively completing the tasks of; apply lotion, moisture, or a serum to a user's hair prior to drying, re-positioning the air flow while maintaining the users arm in a relaxed biomechanically correct, comfortable position. Further in combination with the positioning ability noted, such a device should reduce the time the user's arms are required to be elevated, reducing chance of injury, and the chance of fizz and damage to the hair and scalp.
The forgoing examples of related art and limitation related therewith are intended to be illustrative and not exclusive, and they do not imply any limitations on the invention described and claimed herein. Various limitations of the related art will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon a reading and understanding of the specification below and the accompanying drawings.